Critical Condition

How Health Care in America Became Big Business-- and Bad Medicine

Blackwell North AmerIn Critical Condition, award-winning investigative journalists Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele expose the horror of what health care in America has become. They profile patients and doctors trapped by the system and offer startling personal stories that illuminate what's gone wrong. Doctors tell of being second-guessed and undermined by health care insurers; nurses recount chilling tales of hospital meltdowns; patients explain how they've been victimized by a system that is meant to care for them. Drug companies profit by selling pills in the same manner that Madison Avenue sells soap, while Wall Street rakes in billions by building up and then tearing down health care businesses. And politicians pass legislation perpetuating the injustices and outright fraud the system encourages.

This is a far superior book to "American Healthcare Paradox" by so-called researcher/scholars who appear to be following a different agenda than these investigative jounralists! Although they got all the details right, the macro financial picture is a bit beyond them (not intended as criticism of their book, merely elucidation of the subject) - - the Wall Street cost drivers are the two top cost drivers because the American system is private sector: (1) hedge fund super-speculation the last decade or so, across the entire healthcare sector; and, (2) private equity/leveraged buyouts (led by David Rockefeller's protege, Peter G. Peterson and his Blackstone Group) across the healthcare sector. Otherwise, the authors present us with the facts, something we all can use! (Essentially, the Affordable Care Act is simply the bank bailout, version 2, as the private health insurance companies, and major pharmaceuticals, are owned by the banks - - they promoted the offshoring of America, and now the health insurance business is hurting as there are fewer employees to be covered at American corporations.)